School Permaculture: WESM Blantyre

This project has been supported finanically by about 10 friends of Never Ending Food for 1,600 USD – thank you! The newest information is at the top, scroll down to the bottom to read about the backgrond

Ausward writes: First let me thank you for sending me to the PDC in Nkhatabay and please extend to those who contributed funding. My God bless you all. Permaculture is very amazing life approach. Is really great. How I wish I was trained three years ago. In Nkhatabay, we covered a lot of topics. The facilitators did a great job.

Take care of the earth, Take care of the people:, Share the surplus: these are the three permaculture ethics we were taught including twelve principles like Catch and store energy, Observe and interact, Produce no waste, Obtain a yield, Design from patterns to details, Use and value diversity, Creatively use and respond to change and other interesting principles. We also learnt about Zones, Soil improvement techniques, water harvesting techniques, integrated pest management and many others as per 72 hour curriculum.

Permaculture is about practice not literature and it is really a stand alone culture different from conventional agriculture techniques. The training washed my brain and now geared to start practicing and train my teachers, small management committees and club members.

I want to challenge you that what you did by sending me to this course is an investment to clubs of southern region. I fully participated and committed myself to this course. All what I will need from you is the full support and make me connected to people in practice. The facilitators were just great. Tichafa and lizza were really great. Happy to join your team. Now i understand what permaculture means.

Stacia, thank you so much. If you have an area of interest which you want to hear from me, you are welcome.

Ausward

Permaculture Design Course Announcement

Request 2013 February

Sorry to be so fast in asking for additional support, but I’d love to sent Ausward to the Permaculture Design Course (PDC) in Nkhata Bay and can’t manage to do it alone right now. We were just given 200 dollars that can be the starting point for the Ausward PDC fund. Can anyone else help chip in a few dollars towards this? I really think getting Ausward there to work with Lieza and the other participants, and to study sustainble design for two weeks will have a huge impact in Blantyre. We need about 1,000 USD to cover course costs (600 USD), transport and a Permaculture information packet for him – either a big flash drive or printed materials. If anyone can pitch in, bits of money pile up pretty fast and we should reach the goal quickly.

Update: 2013 February 7

I (Stacia) had the pleasure of visting Ausward Bonongwe today as he and his team were preparing for a meeting with 5 schools with Matthews Mpofu, a permaculture trainer that I worked with during the SchoolHealth & Nutrition pilots. Ausward is on the left in the photo, in the black clothes, Matthews on the right in the tan clothes.

I didn’t have long to stay as I was in a borrowed car with a borrowed driver and only had an hour lunch break from a workshop – but I work with such great people that they all assisted me and I even still got to eat my very healthy and yummy lunch!

When I arrived at the school Ausward and Matthews,were setting up the room to that all participants would be surrounded by the topic. Posters of foods and medicines, books and actual medicines and seeds. They were really setting the tone for success with the way they were preparing and interacting with the people of all ages that they will be working with.

The school hosting the meeting is a run by a chuch, but the environment looks very little like the space that God created it to be! Very soon they will hopefully see the degredation and the solutions waiting to be put in place. They are trying to do a few things to spruce up the school but the methods are high input (cemment and unthoughtful labour) with very little benefit for us – flowers, grass and cement walls. Yes, some benefit, but the potential the space has is not nearly being met.

I attempted to take a pictures of the site with my ipad – but didn’t realize it was set to take movies, so these pictures are screen shots of the movie – it will have to do for now as I don’t have many software options on my computer or ipad. The kids of course became curious quickly about this white lady pulling up in a government car on her own, speaking Chichewa and interacting with old friends. I was just getting them to warm up to me when I had to go.

So, let’s watch progress and send all our best wishes to the team as they learn new ways of living that care for the earth, the people and share resources fairly.

Update: 2013 January 21

It seemed to help to lift this up to the top for a bit, we have raised the funds! Thanks to all that have contributed in the past few months, your money will be going to Blantrye WESM tomorrow and we’ll get updates on their trainings shortly. I’ll send sponsors a more detailed e-mail.

I’m lifting this post back up to the top in hopes that it will catch your attention. I really like what WESM BT’s School Club coordinator, Ausward Bonongwe AuswardWESM@gmail.com is doing. With our help he can get out to more schools more often and give them the support and confidence they need to start up and improve their environments at school and at home. The picture shows a school in Karonga that I visited and promised to live up to the practices they teach in the curriculum – to compost instead of burn. I live 8 hours away from this school and couldn’t follow up on their progress, but Ausward lives within 1 hour of all the schools he could support, if he had the means to get to all of them.

The proposal: 2012 October

The Wildlife and Environmental Society of Malawi, Blantyre branch, would like to support schools in their area to learn about and implement Permaculture designs. If this is something you are interested in supporting, please see: WESM School Permaculture Proposal 2012.10